BP to re-attempt seal of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

BP is poised to make a second attempt to thread a mile-long tube down a
gushing oil well in its latest effort to tackle the disastrous Gulf of
Mexico spill.

A Brown Pelican is cleaned at the Fort Jackson Wildlife Rehabilitation Center after it became coated with oil from the disastrous Gulf oil spillPhoto: AP

By Philip Sherwell in New York

9:45PM BST 15 May 2010

The British company earlier hit problems as engineers tried to direct the skinny tube with robotic submersibles operating 5,000 ft below the surface.

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said that the device was brought back to a ship for re-adjustments but that a second attempt to insert it, in order to siphon off crude, would be made later on Saturday.

The goal is to suck oil to the surface by inserting the 6-inch tube into the broken 21-inch pipe. A “stopper” around the tube is intended to block other crude from escaping from the pipe into the water.

The well has been spewing crude since explosions ripped through a drilling rig on April 20, killing 11 workers.

"There was a problem,” said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary. "They had to reconfigure. They are back down again ... trying to get it inserted.”

Jon Pack, a spokesman for BP, said: "We've never done such operations before and we need to take our time to get it right.”

Mr Suttles also said that the company was making progress with the use of undersea chemical dispersants to break up the oil as it pours out of the severed well-head – reducing the scale of the slick on the surface.

The technique is controversial as it has never previously been attempted underwater and environmental groups and Louisiana state officials have criticised the use of the Gulf as a “toxic testing ground”.

US federal regulators gave approval for the measure on Friday and have said that they will monitor the impact closely. They reluctantly view it as the “less bad” option, compared to the danger of oil washing ashore along the Gulf coastline.

BP abandoned its first effort to contain the leak with a 100-ton dome that was intended to capture and funnel the oil to ships at the surface through a pipe after the contraption became blocked by ice crystals.

At the same time as testing the insertion tube and deploying underwater dispersants, its engineers are separately working on a smaller version of the containment dome, known as the “top hat” because of its size. They are also considering a so-called “junk shot” that would attempt to plug the gushing well by firing shredded tires and golf balls down it.

The long-term solution is to drill a relief well that would intercept the current one and re-direct the oil. That work has begun but is expected to take three months to complete.

The administration of President Barack Obama maintained its political pressure on BP over the weekend. Officials demanded "immediate public clarification" from the company about paying for the spill in a letter released on Saturday.

And an Associated Press report has raised questioned fresh questions about safety standards at BP rigs. The company owns a rig that operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents, which one official warned could "lead to catastrophic operator error”, according to records and interviews quoted by AP.

In February, two months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, 19 members of Congress called on the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling to investigate a whistle-blower's complaints about the BP-owned Atlantis, which is stationed in 7,070 feet of water more than 150 miles south of New Orleans.

AP reported that an independent firm hired by BP substantiated the complaints in 2009 and found that the giant petroleum company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.

Stanley Sporkin, a former federal judge whose firm served as BP's ombudsman, said that the allegation "was substantiated, and that's it". The firm was hired by BP in 2006 to act as an independent office to receive and investigate employee complaints.

Running an oil rig with flawed and missing documentation is like cooking a dinner without a complete recipe, said University of California, Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, an oil pipeline expert who has been reviewing the whistle-blower allegations and studied the Gulf blowout.

"This is symptomatic of a sick system. This kind of sloppiness is what leads to disasters," he told AP. "The sloppiness on the industry side and on the government side. It's a shared problem."

BP and the federal Minerals and Management Service, which regulates oil drilling, did not respond to calls from the AP seeking comment on the whistle-blower allegations. But in January an attorney for BP wrote a letter to Congress saying the company is compliant with all federal requirements and the Atlantis has been operating so safely that it received an MMS award.

"BP has reviewed the allegations and found them to be unsubstantiated," said Karen K. Westall, managing attorney for BP. The MMS is expected to complete its probe later this month.